How long does it normally take to get a reply from somebody? I noticed that companies and institutions usually stipulate the time when they are likely to respond to your letter. They sometimes go even further. For instance, when you’re applying for a job, your application guidelines occasionally state that if you don’t receive a positive reply by a certain date, your application has been unsuccessful.
Obviously, even when an exact period of time is stipulated, it doesn’t mean it will be observed. The situation can get more frustrating if you’re trying to get hold of somebody by phone or email, and the person is taking time, as if on purpose. I mean strictly formal communication in this case, and I had my fair share of chasing contacts. I’m not complaining, though: have I not done this, I would never learn, how persevering I could be. At any event, “short” could in fact be quite long.
I must admit, though, that today my understanding of “shortness” has really expanded. On Sunday I found a video of Oh Early on Ivan’s Day, which I subsequently wrote about. But – and this is a piece of news – I have created a YouTube account. I haven’t uploaded any original videos yet, but have added a lot to ‘My Favourites’ section, just to have them all in one place. So, I decided to post this video by Pesnyary. A little form has opened, I wrote a short blog post, clicked on the button, and YouTube said:
‘Your post will be published shortly’.
I went into my blog’s interface because I wanted to add tags to the post. In fifteen minutes or so there was no post. I thought I did something wrong, so I returned to the video and posted it once again, this time without text. In the next half an hour there were no posts. Somewhat disheartened, I decided to upload an audiofile, which led me to creating an Odeo account. I was slightly concerned that those two posts could still appear on the blog, but Sunday saw none of them.
Neither did Monday.
And not even Tuesday.
Following some strange feeling today in the morning, I decided to check my email before I went to work. And there they were, two email updates from my blog. Predictably, on the blog there were not one, but three posts about Pesnyary‘s song. I deleted those that were no longer relevant.
So, let’s see: it took YouTube nearly three days to publish a post. Given the fact that they didn’t stipulate the time, in which they were going to do it, three days is nothing, really. But it questions the notion of “online real-time publishing” that the web offers to those who use it.